The Winning of the West Volume IV Part 7

Meeting of the Territorial Legislature.

In 1794, there being five thousand free male inhabitants, as provided by law, Tennessee became ent.i.tled to a Territorial legislature, and the Governor summoned the a.s.sembly to the meet at Knoxville on August 17th.

So great was the danger from the Indians that a military company had to accompany the c.u.mberland legislators to and from the seat of government.

For the same reason the judges on their circuits had to go accompanied by a military guard.

Among the first acts of this Territorial Legislature was that to establish higher inst.i.tutions of learning; John Sevier was made a trustee in both Blount and Greeneville Colleges. A lottery was established for the purpose of building the c.u.mberland road to Nashville, and another one to build a jail and stocks in Nashville. A pension act was pa.s.sed for disabled soldiers and for widows and orphans, who were to be given an adequate allowance at the discretion of the county court. A poll tax of twenty-five cents on all taxable white polls was laid, and on every taxable negro poll fifty cents. Land was taxed at the rate of twenty-five cents a hundred acres, town lots one dollar; while a stud horse was taxed four dollars. Thus, taxes were laid exclusively upon free males, upon slaves, lands, town lots, and stud horses, a rather queer combination. [Footnote: Laws of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1803. First Session of Territorial Legislature, 1794.]

Many Industries Established.

Various industries were started, as the people began to demand not only the necessaries of life but the comforts, and even occasionally the luxuries. There were plenty of blacksmith shops; and a goldsmith and jeweller set up his establishment. In his advertis.e.m.e.nt he shows that he was prepared to do some work which would be alien to his modern representative, for he notifies the citizens that he makes "rifle guns in the neatest and most approved fas.h.i.+on." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazelle_, Oct. 20, 1792.]

Ferries and Taverns.

Ferries were established at the important crossings, and taverns in the county-seats and small towns. One of the Knoxville taverns advertises its rates, which were one s.h.i.+lling for breakfast, one s.h.i.+lling for supper, and one and sixpence for dinner; board and lodging for a week costing two dollars, and board only for the same s.p.a.ce and of time nine s.h.i.+llings. Ferriage was three pence for a man and horse and two s.h.i.+llings for a wagon and team.

Trade.

Various stores were established in the towns, the merchants obtaining most of their goods in the great trade centres of Philadelphia and Baltimore, and thence hauling them by wagon to the frontier. Most of the trade was carried on by barter. There was very little coin in the country and but few bank-notes. Often the advertis.e.m.e.nt specified the kind of goods that would be taken and the different values at which they would be received. Thus, the salt works at Was.h.i.+ngton, Virginia, in advertising their salt, stated that they would sell it per bushel for seven s.h.i.+llings and sixpence if paid in cash or prime furs; at ten s.h.i.+llings if paid in bear or deer skins, beeswax, hemp, bacon, b.u.t.ter, or beef cattle; and at twelve s.h.i.+llings if in other trade and country produce, as was usual. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 1, 1793.]

Currency.

The prime furs were mink, c.o.o.n, muskrat, wildcat, and beaver. Besides this the stores advertised that they would take for their articles cash, beeswax, and country produce or tallow, hogs' lard in white walnut kegs, b.u.t.ter, pork, new feathers, good horses, and also corn, rye, oats, flax, and "old Congress money," the old Congress money being that issued by the Continental Congress, which had depreciated wonderfully in value.

They also took certificates of indebtedness either from the State or the nation because of services performed against the Indians, and certificates of land claimed under various rights. The value of some of these commodities was evidently mainly speculative. The storekeepers often felt that where they had to accept such dubious subst.i.tutes for cash they desired to give no credit, and some of the advertis.e.m.e.nts run: "Cheap, ready money store, where no credit whatever will be given," and then proceed to describe what ready money was,--cash, furs, bacon, etc.

The stores sold salt, iron-mongery, pewterware, corduroys, rum, brandy, whiskey, wine, ribbons, linen, calamancos, and in fact generally what would be found at that day in any store in the smaller towns of the older States. The best eight by ten crown-gla.s.s "was regularly imported," and also "beautiful a.s.sortments of fas.h.i.+onable coat and vest b.u.t.tons," as well as "brown and loaf sugar, coffee, chocolate, tea, and spices." In the towns the families had ceased to kill their own meat, and beef markets were established where fresh meat could be had twice a week.

Stock on the Range.

Houses and lots were advertised for sale, and one result of the method of allowing the branded stock to range at large in the woods was that the Range, there were numerous advertis.e.m.e.nts for strayed horses, and even cattle, with descriptions of the brands and ear marks. The people were already beginning to pay attention to the breeding of their horses, and fine stallions with pedigrees were advertised, though some of the advertis.e.m.e.nts show a certain indifference to purity of strain; one stallion being quoted as of "mixed fox-hunting and dray" breed. Rather curiously the Chickasaw horses were continually mentioned as of special merit, together with those of imported stock. Attention was paid both to pacers and trotters.

The lottery was still a recognized method of raising money for every purpose, including the advancement of education and religion. One of the advertis.e.m.e.nts gives as one of the prizes a negro, valued at one hundred and thirty pounds, a horse at ten pounds, and five hundred acres of fine land without improvements at twelve hundred pounds.

Government Escort for Immigrants.

Journeying to the long-settled districts of the East, persons went as they wished, in their own wagons or on their own horses; but to go from East Tennessee either to Kentucky, or to the c.u.mberland district, or to New Orleans, was a serious matter because of the Indians. The Territorial authorities provided annually an escort for immigrants from the Holston country to the c.u.mberland, a distance of one hundred and ten miles through the wilderness, and the departure of this annual escort was advertised for weeks in advance.

Sometimes the escort was thus provided by the authorities. More often adventurers simply banded together; or else some enterprising man advertised that on a given date he should start and would provide protection for those who chose to accompany him. Thus, in the _Knoxville Gazette_ for February 6, 1795, a boat captain gives public notice to all persons who wish to sail from the Holston country to New Orleans, that on March 1st, if the waters answer, his two boats will start, the _Mary_ of twenty-five tons, and the _Little Polly_ of fifteen tons. Those who had contracted for freight and pa.s.sage are desired to attend previous to that period.

Lawlessness.

There was of course a good deal of lawlessness and a strong tendency to settle a.s.sault and battery cases in particular out of court. The officers of justice at times had to subdue criminals by open force.

Andrew Jackson, who was District Attorney for the Western District, early acquired fame by the energy and success with which he put down any criminal who resisted the law. The worst offenders fled to the Mississippi Territory, there to live among Spaniards, Creoles, Indians, and lawless Americans. Lawyers drove a thriving business; but they had their own difficulties, to judge by one advertis.e.m.e.nt, which appears in the issue of the _Gazette_ for March 23, 1793, where six of them give notice that thereafter they will give no legal advice unless it is legally paid for.

Endless Land Speculations.

All the settlers, or at least all the settlers who had any ambition to rise in the world, were absorbed in land speculations: Blount, Robertson, and the other leaders as much so as anybody. They were continually in correspondence with one another about the purchase of land warrants, and about laying them out in the best localities. Of course there was much jealousy and rivalry in the effort to get the best sites. Robertson, being farthest on the frontier, where there was most wild land, had peculiar advantages. Very soon after he settled in the c.u.mberland district at the close of the Revolutionary War, Blount had entered into an agreement with him for a joint land speculation. Blount was to purchase land claims from both officers and soldiers amounting in all to fifty thousand acres and enter them for the Western Territory, while Robertson was to survey and locate the claims, receiving one fourth of the whole for his reward. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Agreement between William Blount and James Robertson, Oct. 30, 1783.] Their connection continued during Blount's term as Governor, and Blount's letters to Robertson contain much advice as to how the warrants shall be laid out. Wherever possible they were of course laid outside the Indian boundaries; but, like every one else, Blount and Robertson knew that eventually the Indian lands would come into the possession of the United States, and in view of the utter confusion of the t.i.tles, and especially in view of the way the Indians as well as the whites continually broke the treaties and rendered it necessary to make new ones, both Blount and Robertson were willing to place claims on the Indian lands and trust to luck to make the claims good if ever a cession was made. The lands thus located were not lands upon which any Indian village stood. Generally they were tracts of wilderness through which the Indians occasionally hunted, but as to which there was a question whether they had yet been formally ceded to the government. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, April 29, 1792.]

Land Tax and Land Sales.

Blount also corresponded with many other men on the question of these land speculations, and it is amusing to read the expressions of horror of his correspondents when they read that Tennessee had imposed a land tax. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Lexington, Ky., March 29, 1795.] By his activity he became a very large landed proprietor, and when Tennessee was made a State he was taxed on 73,252 acres in all. The tax was not excessive, being but $179.72. [Footnote: _Do_., Return of taxable property of Blount, Nashville, Sept. 9, 1796.]

It was of course entirely proper for Blount to get possession of the land in this way. The theory of government on the frontier was that each man should be paid a small salary, and be allowed to exercise his private business just so long as it did not interfere with his public duties. Blount's land speculations were similar to those in which almost every other prominent American, in public or private life, was engaged.

Neither Congress nor the States had as yet seen the wisdom of allowing the laud to be sold only in small parcels to actual occupants, and the favorite kind of speculation was the organization of land companies. Of course there were other kinds of business in which prominent men took part. Sevier was interested not only in land, but in various mercantile ventures of a more or less speculative kind; he acted as an intermediary with the big importers, who were willing to furnish some of the stores with six months' credit if they could be guaranteed a settlement at the end of that time. [Footnote: _Do_., David Allison to Blount, Oct. 16, 1791.]

Business Versatility of the Frontiersman

One of the characteristics of all the leading frontiersmen was not only the way in which they combined business enterprises with their work as Government officials and as Indian fighters, but the readiness with which they turned from one business enterprise to another. One of Blount's Kentucky correspondents, Thomas Hart, the grandfather of Benton, in his letter to Blount shows these traits in typical fas.h.i.+on.

He was engaged in various land speculations with Blount, [Footnote: Clay MSS., Blount to Hart, Knoxville, February 9, 1794. This was just as Hart was moving to Kentucky.] and was always writing to him about locating land warrants, advertising the same as required by law, and the like. He and Blount held some tens of thousands of acres of the Henderson claim, and Hart proposed that they should lay it out in five-hundred-acre tracts, to be rented to farmers, with the idea that each farmer should receive ten cows and calves to start with; a proposition which was of course hopeless, as the pioneers would not lease lands when it was so easy to obtain freeholds. In his letters, Hart mentioned cheerfully that though he was sixty-three years old he was just as well able to carry on his manufacturing business, and, on occasion, to leave it, and play pioneer, as he ever had been, remarking that he "never would be satisfied in the world while new countries could be found," and that his intention, now that he had moved to Kentucky, was to push the mercantile business as long as the Indian war continued and money was plenty, and when that failed, to turn his attention to farming and to divide up those of his lands he could not till himself, to be rented by others.

[Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Dec. 23, 1793.]

This letter to Blount shows, by the way, as was shown by Madison's correspondent from Kentucky, that the Indian war, scourge though it was to the frontiersmen as a whole, brought some attendant benefits in its wake by putting a stimulus on the trade of the merchants and bringing ready money into the country. It must not be forgotten, however, that men like Hart and Blount, though in some ways they were benefited by the war, were in other ways very much injured, and that, moreover, they consistently strove to do justice to the Indians and to put a stop to hostilities.

In his letters Colonel Hart betrays a hearty, healthy love of life, and capacity to enjoy it, and make the best of it, which fortunately exist in many Kentucky and Tennessee families to this day. He wanted money, but the reason he wanted it was to use it in having a good time for himself and his friends, writing: "I feel all the ardor and spirit for business I did forty years ago, and see myself more capable to conduct it. Oh, if my old friend Uncle Jacob was but living and in this country, what pleasure we should have in raking up money and spending it with our friends!" and he closed by earnestly entreating Blount and his family to come to Kentucky, which he a.s.sured him was the finest country in the world, with moreover, "a very pleasant society, for," said he, "I can say with truth that the society of this place is equal, if not superior, to any that can be found in any inland town in the United States, for there is not a day that pa.s.ses over our heads but I can have half a dozen strange gentlemen to dine with us, and they are from all parts of the Union." [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hart to Blount, Lexington, Feb. 15, 1795.]

The Neverending Indian Warfare.

Incessant Violation of the Treaties by Both the Red Men and the White.

The one overshadowing fact in the history of Tennessee during Blount's term as governor was the Indian warfare. Hostilities with the Indians were never ceasing, and, so far as Tennessee was concerned, during these six years it was the Indians, and not the whites who were habitually the aggressors and wrongdoers. The Indian warfare in the Territory during these years deserves some study because it was typical of what occurred elsewhere. It ill.u.s.trates forcibly the fact that under the actual conditions of settlement wars were inevitable; for if it is admitted that the land of the Indians had to be taken and that the continent had to be settled by white men, it must be further admitted that the settlement could not have taken place save after war. The whites might be to blame in some cases, and the Indians in others; but under no combination of circ.u.mstances was it possible to obtain possession of the country save as the result of war, or of a peace obtained by the fear of war. Any peace which did not surrender the land was sure in the end to be broken by the whites; and a peace which did surrender the land would be broken by the Indians. The history of Tennessee during the dozen years from 1785 to 1796 offers an admirable case in point. In 1785 the United States Commissioners concluded the treaty of Hopewell with the Indians, and solemnly guaranteed them certain lands. The whites contemptuously disregarded this treaty and seized the lands which it guaranteed to the Indians, being themselves the aggressors, and paying no heed to the plighted word of the Government, while the Government itself was too weak to make the frontiersmen keep faith. The treaties of New York and of Holston with the Creeks and Cherokees in 1790 and 1791 were fairly entered into by fully authorized representatives of the tribes.

Under them, for a valuable consideration, and of their own motion, the Creeks and Cherokees solemnly surrendered all t.i.tle to what is now the territory of Tennessee, save to a few tracts mostly in the west and southeast; and much of the land which was thus ceded they had ceded before. Nevertheless, the peace thus solemnly made was immediately violated by the Indians themselves. The whites were not the aggressors in any way, and, on the contrary, thanks to the wish of the United States authorities for peace, and to the care with which Blount strove to carry out the will of the Federal Government, they for a long time refrained even from retaliating when injured; yet the Indians robbed and plundered them even more freely than when the whites themselves had been the aggressors and had broken the treaty.

Confusion of the Treaties.

Before making the treaty of Holston Blount had been in correspondence with Benjamin Hawkins, a man who had always been greatly interested in Indian affairs. He was a prominent politician in North Carolina, and afterwards for many years agent among the Southern Indians. He had been concerned in several of the treaties. He warned Blount that since the treaty of Hopewell the whites, and not the Indians, had been the aggressors; and also warned him not to try to get too much land from the Indians, or to take away too great an extent of their hunting grounds, which would only help the great land companies, but to be content with the thirty-fifth parallel for a southern boundary. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hawkins to Blount, March 10, 1791.] Blount paid much heed to this advice, and by the treaty of Holston he obtained from the Indians little more than what the tribes had previously granted; except that they confirmed to the whites the country upon which the pioneers were already settled. The c.u.mberland district had already been granted over and over again by the Indians in special treaties, to Henderson, to the North Carolinians and to the United States. The Creeks in particular never had had any claim to this c.u.mberland country, which was a hundred miles and over from any of their towns. All the use they had ever made of it was to visit it with their hunting parties, as did the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Shawnees, Delawares, and many others. Yet the Creeks and other Indians had the effrontery afterwards to a.s.sert that the c.u.mberland Country had never been ceded at all, and that as the settlers in it were thus outside of the territory properly belonging to the United States, they were not ent.i.tled to protection under the treaty entered into with the latter.

Blount's Good Faith with the Indians.

Blount was vigilant and active in seeing that none of the frontiersmen trespa.s.sed on the Indian lands, and when a party of men, claiming authority under Georgia, started to settle at the Muscle Shoals, he co-operated actively with the Indians in having them brought back, and did his best, though in vain, to persuade the Grand Jury to indict the offenders. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, Sept. 3, 1791.] He was explicit in his orders to Sevier, to Robertson, and to District Attorney Jackson that they should promptly punish any white man who violated the provisions of the treaty; and over a year after it had been entered into he was able to write in explicit terms that "not a single settler had built a house, or made a settlement of any kind, on the Cherokee lands, and that no Indians had been killed by the whites excepting in defence of their lives and property." [Footnote: _Do_., Blount to Robertson, Jan. 2, 1792; to b.l.o.o.d.y Fellow, Sept. 13, 1792.]

Robertson heartily co-operated with Blount, as did Sevier, in the effort to keep peace, Robertson showing much good sense and self-control, and acquiescing in Blount's desire that nothing should be done "inconsistent with the good of the nation as a whole," and that "the faith of the nation should be kept." [Footnote: Blount MSS., Robertson to Blount, Jan. 17, 1793.]

Bad Faith of the Indians.

The Indians as a body showed no appreciation whatever of these efforts to keep the peace, and plundered and murdered quite as freely as before the treaties, or as when the whites themselves were the aggressors. The Creek Confederacy was in a condition of utter disorganization, McGillivray's authority was repudiated, and most of the towns scornfully refused to obey the treaty into which their representatives had entered at New York. A tory adventurer named Bowles, who claimed to have the backing of the English Government, landed in the nation and set himself in opposition to McGillivray. The latter, who was no fighter, and whose tools were treachery and craft, fled to the protection of the Spaniards.

Bowles, among other feats, plundered the stores of Panton, a white trader in the Spanish interest, and for a moment his authority seemed supreme; but the Spaniards, by a trick, got possession of him and put him in prison.

Intrigues of the Spaniards.

The Spaniards still claimed as their own the Southwestern country, and were untiring in their efforts to keep the Indians united among themselves and hostile to the Americans. They concluded a formal treaty of friends.h.i.+p and of reciprocal guarantee with the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees at Nogales, in the Choctaw country, on May 14, 1792. [Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Doc.u.ments; Letter of Carondelet to Duke of Alcudia, Nov. 24, 1794.] The Indians entered into this treaty at the very time they had concluded wholly inconsistent treaties with the Americans. On the place of the treaty the Spaniards built a fort, which they named Fort Confederation, to perpetuate, as they hoped, the memory of the confederation they had thus established among the Southern Indians. By means of this fort they intended to control all the territory enclosed between the rivers Mississippi, Yazoo, Chickasaw, and Mobile. The Spaniards also expended large sums of money in arming the Creeks, and in bribing them to do, what they were quite willing to do of their own accord,--that is, to prevent the demarkation of the boundary line as provided in the New York treaty; a treaty which Carondelet reported to his Court as "insulting and pernicious to Spain, the abrogation of which has lately been brought about by the intrigues with the Indians." [Footnote: Draper MSS., Letter of Carondelet, New Orleans, Sept. 25, 1795.]

Carondelet's Policy.

At the same time that the bill for these expenses was submitted for audit to the home government the Spanish Governor also submitted his accounts for the expenses in organizing the expedition against the "English adventurer Bowles," and in negotiating with Wilkinson and the other Kentucky Separatists, and also in establis.h.i.+ng a Spanish post at the Chickasaw Bluffs, for which he had finally obtained the permission of the Chickasaws. The Americans of course regarded the establishment both of the fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs and the fort at Nogales as direct challenges; and Carondelet's accounts show that the frontiersmen were entirely justified in their belief that the Spaniards not only supplied the Creeks with arms and munitions of war, but actively interfered to prevent them from keeping faith and carrying out the treaties which they had signed. The Spaniards did not wish the Indians to go to war unless it was necessary as a last resort. They preferred that they should be peaceful, provided always they could prevent the intrusion of the Americans. Carondelet wrote: "We have inspired the Creeks with pacific intentions towards the United States, but with the precise restriction that there shall be no change of the boundaries,"

[Footnote: Draper MSS., Spanish Docs.; Carondelet's Report, Oct. 23, 1793.] and he added that "to sustain our allied nations [of Indians] in the possession of their lands becomes therefore indispensable, both to preserve Louisiana to Spain, and in order to keep the Americans from the navigation of the Gulf." He expressed great uneasiness at the efforts of Robertson to foment war between the Chickasaws and Choctaws and the Creeks, and exerted all his powers to keep the Indian nations at peace with one another and united against the settler-folk. [Footnote: _Do_., Carondelet to Don Louis De Las Casas, June 13, 1795, enclosing letter from Don M. G. De Lemos, Governor of Natchez.]

The Spaniards far more Treacherous than the British.

The Spaniards, though with far more infamous and deliberate deceit and far grosser treachery, were pursuing towards the United States and the Southwestern Indians the policy pursued by the British towards the United States and the Northwestern Indians; with the difference that the Spanish Governor and his agents acted under the orders of the Court of Spain, while the English authorities connived at and profited by, rather than directly commanded, what was done by their subordinates. Carondelet expressly states that Colonel Gayoso and his other subordinates had been directed to unite the Indian nations in a defensive alliance, under the protection of Spain, with the object of opposing Blount, Robertson, and the frontiersmen, and of establis.h.i.+ng the c.u.mberland River as the boundary between the Americans and the Indians. The reciprocal guarantee of their lands by the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws was, said Carondelet, the only way by which the Americans could be retained within their own boundaries. [Footnote: Carondelet to Alcudia, Aug. 17, 1793.] The Spaniards devoted much attention to supporting those traders among the Indians who were faithful to the cause of Spain and could be relied upon to intrigue against the Americans. [Footnote: _Do_., Manuel Gayoso De Lemos to Carondelet, Nogales, July 25, 1793.]

Carondelet's Tortuous Intrigues.

The divided condition of the Creeks, some of whom wished to carry out in good faith the treaty of New York, while the others threatened to attack whoever made any move towards putting the treaty into effect, puzzled Carondelet nearly as much as it did the United States authorities; and he endeavored to force the Creeks to abstain from warfare with the Chickasaws by refusing to supply them with munitions of war for any such purpose, or for any other except to oppose the frontiersmen. He put great faith in the endeavor to treat the Americans not as one nation, but as an a.s.semblage of different communities. The Spaniards sought to placate the Kentuckians by promising to reduce the duties on the goods that came down stream to New Orleans by six per cent., and thus to prevent an outbreak on their part; at the same time the United States Government was kept occupied by idle negotiations. Carondelet further hoped to restrain the c.u.mberland people by fear of the Creek and Cherokee nations, who, he remarked, "had never ceased to commit hostilities upon them and to profess implacable hatred for them."

[Footnote: Carondelet to De Lemos, Aug. 15, 1793.] He reported to the Spanish Court that Spain had no means of molesting the Americans save through the Indians, as it would not be possible with an army to make a serious impression on the "ferocious and well-armed" frontier people, favored as they would be by their knowledge of the country; whereas the Indians, if properly supported, offered an excellent defence, supplying from the Southwestern tribes fifteen thousand warriors, whose keep in time of peace cost Spain not more than fifty thousand dollars a year, and even in time of war not more than a hundred and fifty thousand.